Some 16,300 ethnic Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh had officially listed jobs in Armenia as of April this year, Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachatryan said on Thursday.
More than a thousand refugees were registered as individual entrepreneurs and/or fully or partly owned businesses, Khachatryan told a government meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The latest jobs data shows a sharp increase from the number of officially employed Karabakh Armenians recorded by the Armenian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in early December. It stood at 5,350 at the time.
More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians making up Karabakh’s virtually entire remaining population fled to Armenia in late September as Baku regained full control of the region after two days of fighting that left hundreds of soldiers from both sides dead.
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Most refugees have since struggled to find new housing and sources of income. Thousands have reportedly migrated to other countries, mainly Russia, for these reasons.
The lack of adequate housing remains a particularly acute problem. Since November, the government has been paying each refugee, who does not own a home or does not live in a government shelter, 50,000 drams ($125) per month for rent and utility fees.
